Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a display device and, more particularly, to a display device in which each pixel is divided into a red subpixel, a green subpixel, a blue subpixel, and a white subpixel.
Discussion of the Related Art
Recently, various flat panel displays, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), a plasma display panel (PDP), an organic light emitting diode (OLED) display, and an electrophoresis display (EPD), have been developed. The liquid crystal display displays an image by controlling an electric field applied to liquid crystal molecules based on a data voltage. An active matrix liquid crystal display includes a thin film transistor (TFT) in each pixel.
The liquid crystal display includes a liquid crystal display panel, a backlight unit irradiating light onto the liquid crystal display panel, source driver integrated circuits (ICs) for supplying a data voltage to data lines of the liquid crystal display panel, gate driver ICs for supplying gate pulses (or scan pulses) to gate lines (or scan lines) of the liquid crystal display panel, a control circuit for controlling the source driver ICs and the gate driver ICs, and a light source driving circuit for driving light sources of the backlight unit.
The liquid crystal display is being developed to have a white (W) subpixel added to each pixel including a red (R) subpixel, a green (G) subpixel, and a blue (B) subpixel. As described below, such a display device, in which each pixel is divided into the R, G, B, and W subpixels, is referred to as an RGBW type display device. The W subpixel increases luminance of each pixel and decreases luminance of the backlight unit, thereby reducing power consumption of the liquid crystal display.
A multiplexer (MUX) may be installed between the source driver IC and the data lines of the liquid crystal display panel, thereby reducing the cost of the display device. The multiplexer time-divides the data voltage output from the source driver IC and distributes the data voltages to the data lines, thereby reducing the number of output channels of the source driver IC. However, when a high switching frequency is generated and a single color is displayed on the display panel, power consumption of the multiplexer increases. In the invention disclosed herein, the single color may be anyone of red, green, and blue colors.